


We Make Our Own Lightning

by innie



Series: Elastic Heart [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-02
Updated: 2011-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Lestrade's wife awaken all sorts of possibilities in each other.</p><p>(art by sunryder!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Make Our Own Lightning

**Introducing Vee**   
_all of the continents used to be one body_

Vee caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and let loose a string of curses hot enough to blister the ears of anybody lurking in her studio. Not that anybody was. She'd started the day by setting up the mirror in the corner to stay aware of the way the light was falling on the stone, but somehow in the course of working had managed to forget the strict instructions she'd given herself not to relax and let her hands drift toward her back pockets or through the thick mess of her hair; there were streaks of gritty white in her hair, aging her prematurely, and ghostly hand-shaped prints all over her arse.

Too bad she couldn't pretend that the impressions were from Greg's hands, at least not to herself; she knew the weight and shape of them, the roughness and certainty of them, from having enjoyed a certain intimacy with them for the past twenty years. Gemma Ballin, their downstairs neighbour for the last ten, wouldn't know the difference, though, and Vee thought parading by her with the marks on full display might be an effective means of stopping the _just thought I'd see if you needed anything, Greg, love_ and _thought you might want a proper Sunday roast, not just vegetables_ chats that always seemed to occur on Gemma's laundry days, judging by the barely-there clothing she sported.

Bugger it, she'd've enjoyed doing that but she had to get ready, so she legged it the quarter mile back to the flat, thinking as she went. Dinner with the Chief Inspector and his wife meant she had to wash her hair, not just bundle it out of the way and hope the lighting in the restaurant was too low to make out if the white was natural. Percy wasn't all that bad, really, and Bridget was actually rather fun, she reminded herself as she worked shampoo into the unruly tangle of her hair. She was mangling the lyrics to "We Got the Beat" – half of them seemed borrowed from "Leather & Lace" – when she realised what she could do with that smallish piece of marble she'd struck away from the main block. She could make Gemma a reproduction of Greg's lovely cock, something to keep on her mantelpiece or coffee table, as a conversation starter. Though in her experience, when the real thing entered the picture, her side of the conversation was likely to dwindle into incoherent pleadings and satisfied sighs.

She heard him enter the bathroom as she was laughing to herself at the thought of presenting Gemma with such a gift. Maybe with a tasteful bow of red velvet. "Do I want to know?" he called, voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the pounding of the water.

"I doubt it," she said honestly, diligently working through the knots in her hair with conditioner.

"Yeah, I never do," Greg muttered around his toothbrush, then laughed as she continued with her song.

*

Greg's arm was warm and welcoming around her waist as they walked to the restaurant; they were snugged so closely together that she had to tip her head back just to see him properly, the setting September sun firing the ends of his hair and smoothing out the few lines he wore on his face. He was too used to the scrutiny to pay her any mind, and she was too used to being struck by his beauty to watch where she was going, so all in all, the arm around her was an effective navigator too.

That arm felt a bit tighter these days, as it seemed like her arse was growing by the hour. Vee frowned to herself, trying to work out if she cared enough about that to give up sweets or to exercise regularly, and Greg dropped one hand to give her backside a good squeeze. Not just a detective and a diplomat, but an arse-man as well. Good thing, too, because the restaurant they were going to had the most divine pudding, ice cream with a hot brandy-and-caramel sauce and a bit of fresh mango, and watching Greg eat his half always gave her a pleasant shiver. She kissed the side of his neck briefly just before they went in and they entered the restaurant smiling.

*

The cooking at the restaurant had gone sharply downhill, and the three vegetarian items on the old menu had apparently been consolidated into one confused mass; when the curly lettuce in the side salad was the best thing on the plate, it was time to throw in the towel. She raised an eyebrow at Greg, who was tucking into his porterhouse steak with gusto, pausing for a millisecond to grin guiltily at her even though Percy had – as always – picked the place. Well, since Greg was already feeling pangs of guilt, it would be cruel of her to deny him the chance to make it up to her. The place three streets over did gorgeous mini-pizzas.

Decision made, she rejoined the conversation Percy was dominating, about the elections and French films and football, but had one eye on her plate as she separated out ingredients based on colour and texture, admiring the patterns her fork was making. When Percy finally wound down his oration and started talking shop with Greg, she and Bridget breathed simultaneous sighs of relief and got down to proper conversation.

"That colour really suits you," Vee said, spearing another bite of her deconstructed salad to appease her stomach. "I had a scarf just that shade once – it looked ghastly on me, of course, all wrong for my skin tone – so I ended up pinning it to the wall of the wretched flat I lived in at the time."

"Oh, dear," Bridget said, amusement heavily implied in her voice. "This isn't going to end well for the brave little forget-me-not scarf, is it?"

"Marble dust." Vee pronounced the scarf's death sentence with all appropriate solemnity. "Cashmere doesn't wash well."

She knew she had to eat more if she didn't want her White Russian to go straight to her head, but there was no more lettuce to be had, and in any case, Bridget had pushed her plate away – Vee didn't blame her, as she wouldn't have wanted the wide eye of the fish she'd been eating to be fixed on her – in favour of her Gibson. Getting down to drinks and brass tacks were one and the same with Bridget, so Vee sipped her drink and leaned in a little for discretion's sake.

"Of course I don't have to worry as much, now that Perce is doing what amounts to a desk job, but that strangling case that wrapped up last month? Terrifying. I kept having visions of him with his eyes bulged out and tongue gone stiff." Bridget shuddered minutely. "I wish sometimes he'd let me keep my job; things were so much easier when I had numbers to wrestle into submission and could take my mind off his work once in a while. Now all I do is give luncheon parties and stand around at charity dinners looking decorative." Bridget tipped back the rest of her drink with an air of grim dissatisfaction. "When Greg does get the bump up the ladder, you have to make sure you keep what's important to you."

Vee rested her hand lightly on top of Bridget's and squeezed gently. The men looked over at that, and she felt a protective urge come over her, determined that neither of them should see Bridget just then, when all she needed was a moment to pull herself back together. "Oh, Greg knows better than to expect me to be decorative," she said softly, rewarded by the amused laugh that followed the slight widening of Bridget's eyes.

"Plotting, I expect," Percy said genially as he looked them over. "Now, who's for pudding?"

*

"Mmm, you smell gorgeous," Greg said, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling. That shampoo she'd used smelt of coconut, the cool scent always pleasant on the warm cloud of her hair. It smelt divine on him too, and these days she could catch his scent more easily, now that he'd given up cigarettes and there was no cloud of smoke dulling everything about him. A trace of caramel still lingered inside his mouth when he kissed her, each of them relying on the other to hold them steady as they walked back to their flat, dodging the other pedestrians on the pavement who were shivering in the dark.

They weren't twenty-somethings ready and able to have marathon sex on the stairs – she wouldn't have trod barefoot on those steps unless she'd cleaned them herself, so anything further was definitely out of the question – but there was no such thing as a wrong place for some proper kissing with the best man she knew. She had her hands on his biceps, firm through the warm cloth of his striped Oxford and thick topcoat, and his hands were back on her bum, and their mouths found each other effortlessly.

He was lovely, and he was hers. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Gemma staring enviously at them; she closed her eyes and kept going.

* * *

**Introducing John**   
_the boundary of his two bare arms_

John had never been one of those chaps with a head for figures, facts, or anything else dry. When questions like which team had the most tries at goal during World Cup play came up, he was content to sit silently with his pint and just listen to competing voices until blood and beer were spilt.

That was when he sprang into action, because for John, something only stuck in his brain if he'd tried it himself. He never had problems memorising all the bones or muscle groups in the human body because he'd treated injuries to most of them in his time at clinics, on rugby fields, and under combat conditions. Once it was in his memory, it was there for good.

Or at least that's how it had once been. Before he'd been shot and shipped off to an underfunded hospital, his brain in a muddle, his shoulder in a worse one, and no one to answer his questions, pointed or delirious, about the soldiers in his unit who might have survived. There was no information to be had about Dunn's hand or Elsman's spine, and the case histories John had been keeping safe in his brain swirled away, starved into nothingness and beaten into meaninglessness. He lay there in his hospital bed, looking up at the pitted ceiling and hating everything about the war, especially himself; those soldiers had been hurt in the line of duty, and John couldn't even remember them properly. There was no decency in him, no respite against himself. When a new kind of statistics was fought over, on topics like the most devastating surgery endured without anaesthetic, he'd be that silent lump again.

*

He didn't want to think about his leg. Not that thinking about his shoulder – and what that tremor in his hand meant to his career as a surgeon – or thinking about Harry, steadily drinking herself to death, was any better. So he thought about his leg, it being the safest option of the three. _Well done, idiot,_ he thought when he woke tiredly the morning after a bad night, just looking at it and waiting for agony to hit, and of course it refused to oblige him – not a twinge, not a lick of pain.

John outsmarted his blasted leg by seizing the chance to do some walking through London, Oyster card carefully tucked in his nearly empty wallet as a lifeline against the moment his leg would remember its old tricks and collapse beneath him. It was sad, he thought, that parts of his body were at war with his brain, but the idea was darkly amusing too, and it kept him from considering his hand as a casualty; he could so clearly picture the puffed-up little general who was in charge of his leg.

He made it all the way down to the South Bank before the bastard of a general triumphed, then wanted to scream when a pretty girl, her eyes softening as she took in his cane, offered him her seat on the bus back across the bridge.

*

He stayed home – that was as good a word as any, he supposed, even if it did, in this instance, mean Harry's well-appointed flat – on the days it was absolutely pissing outside; he'd learnt the hard way that he couldn't count on staying upright in the wet with one leg liable to go rogue at any moment, and, in a rather hilarious reversal of a lifetime's habits, Harry screamed like the very devil if he tracked in mud over her kitchen floor. It wasn't like Clara was around to see any of it – she'd carefully occupied herself with a court case that took up her days and nights, for which John could hardly blame her.

The whole world wallowing in wet outside, John stayed tucked up inside, making his way through Clara's well-stocked library. Twice he found himself reading books he'd read before but hadn't recognised simply because the editions wore different covers. Both times he ploughed through, arguing to himself that the books had to be worth rereading if both he and Clara had found them good enough to keep; there was a value, too, to finishing something he'd started, a satisfaction that glowed in him even though he knew it was a meaningless feat.

There had been days, weeks, spent like this when he'd been little, back pressed against the rough bark of a tree in his mum's back garden, legs either straddling a thick branch or propped against the solidity of a sizeable crotch, a book in his hands. He missed the rustle of whispering leaves, but at least Clara's office was painted a soft green, and with his eyes half-closed the illusion held, if only for a moment.

Right on cue, his leg seized up and he lunged desperately for his loathsome cane, just out of reach. Fucking Christ, not even forty and he'd already become the evening portion of the Sphinx's riddle on the ages of man. Harry came home from work – no, not straight home, but rather by way of a happy hour at the posh wine bar near her office – to find him on the wood floor of the small, dim room that housed Clara's books, laughing like a machine-gun, rat-a-tat, like he couldn't stop.

* * *

**When Vee Met John**   
_the coefficient of the body is another body_

Greg had his hands cupped around the porcelain beer stein that Tony had brought back from Germany. It was as tall as his forearm was long, and the size of it was supposed to be a _joke_ , she remembered, frowning, knowing that Greg would have filled it with bitter black coffee and that he'd be irritable all day because of the caffeine.

Even good men were prize idiots.

Seeing him being diligent and going through his case files meant she had no excuse for lounging about like an odalisque. Vee wrapped herself up in her warmest cardigan and puttered around the flat, gathering up the clothes and towels and sheets that needed laundering, and set the first load going in the washing machine. Feeling virtuous, she rewarded herself with the last of the Christmas chocolate, setting aside one sturdy chunk of Dairy Milk for Greg when he emerged from whatever pernicious file he was currently buried in, then made toast and tea for a light breakfast.

The morning light was cold and thin, and her fingers itched to hold a pencil or charcoal. The last time she'd sketched Greg, it had been midsummer, sunlight as heavy as syrup pouring over him, his sleepy bedroom eyes smiling at her. Looking at him now, hair still a bit damp from his shower, the barest hint of a belly stretching his thin collarless shirt out, he looked vulnerable in a way he hadn't been then even though he'd been naked in a puddle of light.

It was because he _was_ vulnerable, she saw once she had her sketchbook in her hands and his familiar outline on the page; he was only human, but still throwing himself into protecting the world, and he would suffer if he couldn't catch whoever had committed crimes, if he couldn't keep everyone on his team safe and happy and clever. It would show on him in the form of bags under his eyes, lines on his face, or just heaviness in his step, and he would rebuke himself for it like it had been his choice to let that killer walk free.

She put down the pad and kissed the top of his head, lending him some of her warmth.

*

"How hard do you think it would be to teach myself to knit?" she asked as she gave the rice a quick stir, tapped the flat spoon against the rim of the pot, and replaced the lid. Three more minutes and it should be done.

"Not hard enough, so you'd get bored with it," Greg answered, ceding his bottle of beer to her and peering over her shoulder as if he hadn't been watching everything that went into the pots on the hob. "You don't have time anyway, not if you want to finish that piece for the school next month." He took his bottle back when she held it out to him.

She poured half the pot of sambar into a separate container for him, then cracked dried chilli peppers into the liquid still cooking. "Ugh, it's so terrible. Nobody is going to like it – I don't even like it – and then they'll spell my name wrong on the plaque, and it's just so _boring_. They commissioned me to sculpt 'Academia' and then handed me a design! What's the point of hiring someone with _ideas_ , then?"

"They're idiots, yes, but idiots with deep pockets, and you've got the skill to do exactly what they want, so they'll be impressed. And maybe one of them with a little more imagination will say, 'Oh, I want her to make something just for me.'" His accent slid from normal to ultraposh as he did his impression of a school trustee on the cusp of discovering he had the makings of an artistic soul. Greg took a long swallow of his beer and made a face. "Christ, I sounded just like him, then."

There was only ever one _him_ , but she liked saying the name anyway, just because it was so absurd. "Sherlock Holmes?"

He nodded. "Poshest bastard I've ever met."

"Worse than Percy?" she asked dubiously. "I have to meet him."

"No!" Greg said, then jumped just a little when the pressure cooker let out its shrill whistle. "I don't even want to know how he'd insult you, but I know I'm not up to hearing it."

She was going to argue that she could take care of herself, that it would take more than clipped consonants coming from someone behaving like the world's lord and master to hurt her, but Greg was already looking upset; for five years, he'd been looking upset every time he thought of Sherlock Bloody Holmes, and if he wanted her to stay untainted by him, she'd keep away.

She slid the bottle out of his hand, set it on the worktop, and nudged her way into Greg's arms, kissing the side of his neck, reminding him that this space was his oasis, free of screaming horrors and posh bastards alike.

*

She wished she could have extended that safe space to the press conference that was being televised because one of the news channels had got wind that two of the suicide victims were _important people_. Greg was wearing his dark coat like it was proof of his respectability and her heart ached at the thought that it wasn't enough – the Met putting his face out there only meant that he was the one who'd be blamed if the suicides continued, but if he stopped them it would be just one more statistic used for end-of-year begging for budgets.

At least he had Sally by his side, a good and proper second, her voice crisp and clear and authoritative, her respect for Greg evident just from her posture. Vee had often wanted to use Sally as a model, but it seemed that no one was interested in a modern take on allegorical figures like _Strength_ and _Mercy_ and _Discipline_. Or at least not _her_ modern take.

Vee thought back and realised it was her turn to call Sally for coffee. She ought to do it before the week was out, given how stressed the sergeant was looking onscreen. Her sketchpad lay forgotten on her lap as the press conference was interrupted by Greg and Sal and all of the reporters receiving text messages simultaneously; Greg's lips tightened and Sally's jaw clenched ominously. All the way across London, Vee could feel her own fingers clutching her pencil in a death grip. Sherlock Bloody Holmes making things difficult, she'd bet her life.

[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/innie_darling/pic/00023818/)

*

Vee loved making lists and checking things off them. Except, of course, when the only item still unchecked was the one thing she had been putting off for far too long, and the list turned into evidence of all the things she'd rather do. She cleaned off the toilet brush and sighed, facing the facts.

That thrice-damned school commission needed to be finished, and quickly, so that the marble had some time to settle into its new shape and she had time to polish the surfaces to different grades of fineness to catch the lights of the school atrium.

She stripped off her scrubbing gloves and texted Greg that she was heading down to the studio. When his shift was over he'd text her back, even if he were on his way home; that was the deal they'd struck, and it worked well enough to keep worry for him segregated to one corner of her mind.

Duran Duran was the right call if she had to sculpt beautiful boys – she detested the automatic association of white marble with Greek male forms, particularly in this case given that the students at the school, boys and girls alike, came from Africa and Asia and the Americas as well as western Europe, but the design had not been subject to her approval – so she set her iPod in its dock, put her mobile near the mirror to heighten her chances of seeing its lights blink when Greg checked in, and got to work.

The playlist was on its third, or maybe fourth, repeat and she was considering the way Roger Taylor had looked, all sleepy and surprised and gorgeous, in the video for "Hungry Like the Wolf" as she finished carving the last of the scrolls that lay at the boys' feet. She straightened up and winced as her back cracked in protest at the odd poses she'd forced herself into. God, how had it got to be well past midnight already? Wiping herself down with a damp rag and hoping the bandana had kept most of the marble dust out of her hair, she hurried over to check her mobile.

As if he'd been waiting, Greg sent her a follow-up text just then. _Still working. New crime, shooter. Home by 3?_ Right. That meant he hadn't eaten, had been pouring coffee down his gullet and wondering vaguely why his stomach was always rebelling, and would be exhausted enough that his eyes were close to crossing. Food would be the first order of business, no matter how much he protested that he needed a shower or their bed; he wouldn't sleep properly unless his stomach was at least partially appeased. She considered the options, then decided on that Chinese on Baker Street, which was open until two.

*

The aromas of the place made her abruptly aware of how badly she needed food as well, so she scanned the menu and considered the merits of noodles versus rice and black bean sauce versus garlic sauce. "Broccoli with garlic sauce, bean curd with black bean sauce, sesame chicken, steamed pork dumplings, vegetable fried rice, and pork lo mein, please," she said. The man behind the counter looked so deeply uninterested that she thought he might keel over from ennui until the door behind her opened, letting in a sharp draft of brisk midwinter air that woke him up. "Ten minutes," he promised, already looking behind her for the next customers and smiling when he evidently recognised them.

She turned to see who could have made him perk up enough to paste a smile on his face and saw two men, utterly mismatched. The one who exuded an air of absolute competence was trim, blond, and professional-looking, and the other was tall and skinny and looked like a complete loon. The one with the wheat-coloured hair nodded at her without really looking, too intent on his conversation with the other one to pay her any mind. "No, but Sherlock –" she heard as they walked past her to get to the counter and place their order.

 _Sherlock._ That gangly nutjob was _Sherlock Holmes_. No wonder Greg groaned at the mirror and proclaimed that his hair would still be as dark as it'd been the day he'd picked her up at Nanette's party were it not for Sherlock Bloody Holmes.

The kind-looking man placed an order and then was promptly backed up by Sherlock into a corner of the takeaway shop while they waited. She frowned, trying to work out who the man could be; Greg hadn't mentioned getting a new team member, and he would have rolled out the red carpet for anyone who could keep Sherlock as calm as this fellow evidently could. She looked over at them and thought that the man had a lovely smile, one that involved his eyes and cheeks as well as his mouth. And Sherlock – she snuck another glance, hoping he was paying more attention to that very nice smile than he was to any outside observation – Sherlock didn't have a _smile_ so much as an expression of deranged delight, if the unholy light in his eye was any indication.

The man behind the counter held up a carrier bag full of food and pointed at her, so she made her way back up to him, brushing against the rough tweed of Sherlock's gorgeous coat on her way. Even turned away from him, she could feel his assessing eyes on her, poring over her from her dusty hair to her battered green trainers; she resisted the urge to surprise him by whispering his name as she walked away.

There was only one detective whose attention she wanted at the moment, and she texted him as she left the shop: _Come home._

*

"Were you going for Bohemian or were you just feeling too sodding lazy for words?" she asked when she got home to find Greg on the floor of the sitting room with an old tablecloth in front of him. There was a jug of water, two of the stainless steel tumblers they'd bought from the spice stall in the Portobello Road market, and two sets of polished chopsticks resting on the tablecloth.

"A little from column A, a little from column B," he said with a tired laugh.

"Poor love," she said, commiserating. "Eat up while it's hot." She set the bag down and headed for the kitchen.

"No, stay," he protested. "What did I forget?"

"Napkins, extra duck sauce, and spicy mustard, and anyway I want to wash my hands." After she shut off the water, she gathered everything and went back to where he was sitting lopsidedly, too exhausted to keep his spine straight. "Want to tell me what happened?" she asked, unpacking the food.

It took him several moments to work up the energy to speak. "They weren't suicides." She paused with a cube of bean curd halfway to her mouth. "Sherlock figured it out, of course, and to prove it, he went off to have a face-to-face challenge with the killer, the sodding git."

Watching him struggling to sit up and feed himself, she crawled over to him and took the box of sesame chicken out of his hands and got him to drop his lacquered chopsticks. She shifted until he was pressed up against her side. "Bean curd and broccoli," she announced, offering him a bite for each one she took herself. "Then what?" she prompted. "Presumably Sherlock triumphed and made a grand speech about his brilliance and left you with a mountain of paperwork, not remembering or caring that you'll be back at your desk by eight."

He burrowed into her side like a small, sleepy child, and she could feel him grin against her belly when his movements tickled her and made her giggle. "Was more exciting than that. Sherlock evidently has to show off, even to fucking _killers_ , so he was playing the man's game and was quite possibly on his way to being 'suicide' number five when some bloody nut with a gun popped up from nowhere and shot the killer. The first killer. There are now two killers in the case _plus_ Sherlock. ' _Mountain_ ' of paperwork is an understatement."

She'd got vegetable fried rice everywhere. "Who's the second killer?" she asked. "What did Sherlock say?"

"He spouted off a string of deductions like he'd been waiting for days to reel them off, because it really is his only party trick, and then suddenly said he was entirely wrong. Never heard _that_ from him before." Greg snuffled into her breast, warm breath heating her skin through her thin shirt, and suddenly she could feel his entire body stiffen. "Oh, God, it was Watson. Military man, sharpshooter, moral principles – Sherlock said it himself before recanting."

She wondered if Watson was the man with the wheat-coloured hair, the one who'd stood next to Sherlock at the Chinese takeaway shop and smiled at her with kind eyes. She remembered his hands, which had certainly looked strong and decisive enough to wield a weapon. She stopped chewing, considering. "No," Greg said softly, as if he'd forgotten she could still hear him. "Couldn't have been him. He needs a cane to get round and his hands have a tremor; I saw it when Sherlock had him examine the last suicide." He blew out a gusty breath. "Thank God."

"You liked him," Vee said, putting down the food to cradle his head against her. She waited until she felt his nod. "But then you like everyone." He laughed, the sound rusty in his throat, and she held him to her for a moment longer.

* * *

**When John Met Vee**   
_perfectly honourable but lawless_

The bedsit he found was tiny; with or without his cane, he could get from one end to the other in less than five steps, a comforting thought. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for him before, and he wasn't going to let it be now. If worse came to worst, he could flop down on his belly and let the eight feet of air above him swirl, uncontained and suggestive of vastness.

It lacked colour, its dull beige walls nothing like Clara's vibrant scarlets and indigoes, and he shivered in his chilly bed, covered only in inadequate sheets worn thin but not soft by too much washing with bleach. He pulled on a thick jumper and curled his toes inside his woolly socks and drifted off to sleep.

It might have been the soothing warmth of the jumper that did it, but his dream started with the shimmery air of Afghanistan, that clean bright heat on his back as he pulled his armband on, red cross lying snugly on his bicep, and all too soon the cross turned into a bullseye and he was down, hearing screams, feeling his breath scrape through his throat, his leg buckle, his shoulder catch fire, his helmet pull against the grain of his sweaty hair, the agony and the excruciating slowness of it all. There were fingers on his chest, scrabbling uselessly at the cloth that covered him, and it was only when he rolled and shifted, the ground giving way beneath him, that he realised that the fingers were his own, that no one had heard the scream that had punched out of him over the noises of bullets whistling and soldiers shouting orders and imprecations. There, surrounded by the men who called him Doc and pretended to disobey his orders, John understood two things: he was not going to die, and he was utterly alone.

*

He woke unrefreshed, ate a mealy apple, and drank a cup of tea so tasteless he should have saved the sugar.

His leg twinged. He told it to fuck off and went for a walk.

The winter sun over London seemed like a weak runner-up to the one he'd been battling under, the one he actually missed. That unrelenting sun had browned his skin and turned the hair on his arms crisply gold; without it, he was sinking back into a mouse-coloured non-entity.

He laughed at himself then, unsure if it was his own saner self or Harry whose voice he heard in his head at that, wry and plain: _Keep moaning about the sun and you'll sound like one of those born-again Druids you found hilarious back at uni._ He probably had eyes just as mad, mad enough that even his own inner voice balked at what should have been the next chastisement: _Keep moaning about the heat and you'll sound like you miss the war, like you wish you still had blood in your eyes and a fallen comrade under your hands._

But no one seemed to notice his stark, staring eyes in his careworn face, not the man to whom he handed over his rent, not the girl who sold him coffee every third morning – he couldn't afford the good stuff more often than that, and he wasn't about to go back to drinking swill.

He stumbled as he walked through the park, long habit making his pace brisk even though he had nowhere to go, and had to stump along with that hateful cane, the curve of the handle like a bludgeon in his hand.

*

Military bureaucracy was all about reinventing the wheel at every opportunity. Medical personnel weren't supposed to be on the front lines, true, but he could hardly be the first doctor who'd been injured and invalided; still, he was passed around from one office to another, no one quite sure what to do with him, no one willing to just ask him what he wanted.

Someone along the way must have stamped his file with a symbol that meant _let the shrinks deal with it_ and there was a note with his pension cheque informing him that an appointment had been made on his behalf.

Going would at least fill a few hours of his day. Even if she didn't have the magic words that would repair the tenuous link between his mind and his leg, she might still be of some use. That turned out not to be the case. It seemed she thought that the magic words should be his.

*

Why he was in such a hurry all the time seemed to be one of those questions he had enough sense to ask but not to actually answer; it wasn't as if his bedsit looked any more appealing in the daylight, weak light only highlighting instead of banishing its air of dinginess. Nevertheless, he stumped through the park, making quite good time, and it occurred to him that speed, motion itself, might be enough to keep the worst of his unhappiness at bay. He eyed the energetic joggers and the winter-bare trees, not registering the call of "John!" until the voice continued, "John Watson!"

"Stamford – Mike Stamford," the man introduced himself and John fumbled for enough courtesy to hold out his hand and say hello. That minimum evidently wasn't enough to keep his expression from twisting, though Mike misread it, saying self-deprecatingly, "Yeah, I know, I got fat."

"No," John demurred; it wasn't that Mike had _got_ fat that surprised him, it was that Mike had clearly become exactly what he had promised, back when they were twenty and had known nothing about the world. Mike at that age had been big-boned, hearty, with a sweet face and a pleasant voice, and here he was, a lifetime later, none of those qualities jarred out of place. It had been too long since John had seen anyone whose life could be plotted like a straight line on a graph; the soldiers he'd served with were killed, wounded, or traumatised, and certainly Harry's own line spiked and swerved with each drink she took, wrecking her marriage and sabotaging her chances of happiness.

He wondered how exactly Mike had recognised him, given that his current appearance seemed far removed from the first-class surgeon with a devoted wife and brilliant children he'd meant to be by this time. He swallowed around the knot in his throat when the most plausible explanation – that Mike had known, or at least assumed, all along that John would end up like this, bitter, broken, and entirely on his own – finally struck him, nudged along by Mike's ready memory for his love of London and the name of his recalcitrant sibling. John grimaced, but Mike apparently took it as a smile, for he hauled John off, leading the way to the absurdly overpriced coffee shop on the corner.

*

The man Mike introduced him to was clearly mad, shamming expressions like he'd been taught to do so by a tutor in humanity who'd had an infinite supply of patience but only a limited time with his pupil; John honestly could not remember when he'd last seen a smile so blatantly pasted on. And yet, what was the point of it all? The smile was not properly motivated by good feeling and all it did was draw attention to the oddness of the man's pale face – but then John felt his own mouth stretch in a reflexive smile, an automated response to such a gesture, and understood that he'd been reading the man incorrectly. Sherlock Holmes wasn't showing off with his clever guesses; what he was doing was laying out his habits like a surgeon laying out his shining tools before making the first clean cut.

It was intriguing enough that John felt some stirring inside himself, a desire to follow through and meet the fellow at the flat he'd picked out. The man's easy dismissal of the female doctor who'd fetched him coffee grated on John, but the realisation that Harry, just by virtue of being herself, female of the species, had dinged the accuracy of those improbable, impossibly specific guesses to a substantial degree gave him a trump card of his own. He remembered that in Afghanistan, right up until the moment he'd been shot, the luck of the Watsons had been something of a byword.

Mike looked abashed as the man swept out of the room, going on in his posh accent about his riding crop. "Let me buy you lunch," Mike said, "and then I've got to be back for an afternoon lecture. There's a really nice place round the corner that I can't bring myself to go to alone."

That was lovely and graceful of Mike, to make it seem like John was the one bestowing favours, and he nearly rebelled against the kindliness, feeling like a man waiting for an elderly uncle's long-coveted inheritance. He told himself sharply not to be stupid and let Mike buy whatever he was in the mood for. Rustic Italian, it turned out, and he was glad thirty minutes later that he'd made such a resolution.

Mike evidently hadn't changed, was still the same boy at heart he'd been twenty years before, when the two of them had been the most notorious pranksters in the history of Barts; John sat back and didn't try to make out what Mike was whispering to their waitress, a very pretty girl, but he surprised himself with his laughter when he saw what Mike had contrived to put in front of him: a plate of pasta with mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, olives, and chicken. The waitress smiled uncertainly while the two of them wheezed with laughter at the sight of the undigested version of what they'd encountered upon doing their first autopsy, cutting open the stomach to find a lovely meal that they'd pretended to critique, pondering the "woodsy notes" of the mushrooms and the "organic quality" of the chicken. "You're crazy, your friend is crazy –" John sputtered.

"You're the one who's laughing, mate," Mike said, still giggling and wiping his eyes.

John got home, pleasantly full, and decided he might just go see the place that that nutter had picked out. It had to be better than this, and Mike had implicitly vouched for the man.

*

It was strange to shoot in the dark, to take aim across a sea of blackness unrelieved by the artificial light of a firefight. Squeezing the trigger and shouting his mad new flatmate's name – attempting to save someone by firing a gun – felt like the last scene of an odd, sidewinding dream.

He dropped to the floor as soon as he saw the cabbie keel over, tucked the warm gun into the back of his waistband, and began his crawl out of the room.

Soon enough, there were lights and bustling bodies everywhere. He couldn't trust his jacket to conceal the shape of the weapon, so he fell back on as good an approximation of parade rest as his shoulder would allow, keeping his hands clasped behind him and his wrists crossed just over the small of his back, and concentrated on looking as uninvolved and innocent as he could manage, given that he was twenty years out of practice.

The knots his stomach had tied itself into untwisted abruptly when he realised Sherlock was the only one who'd seen through his _who, me?_ posturing, and he was more than ready to suggest food when Sherlock beat him to the punch. They moved quickly away from Sherlock's rapacious-looking brother and his flat-out gorgeous assistant and headed for the takeaway place Sherlock recommended. There was a woman there, thick black hair peeking out from beneath a bandana, covered in a light but nearly uniform sprinkling of white dust. Like she was the cocaine fairy, he thought bitterly, recalling one of the many revelations of the day, but then she turned and he saw her face in three-quarter profile and wondered why she seemed so familiar. Had he seen her earlier, outside Barts, or maybe two nights ago, doing her weekly shop at the same time he did his? He smiled at her and got a smile in return, but no flash of recognition lit her eyes. He shrugged, pressed himself against the wall so that she'd have room to get by with her bag of food, and tried to work out just what he could afford.

[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/innie_darling/pic/00022se4/)

* * *

**An Unexpected Meeting**   
_intentionally delighted in_

"Really, sir, I don't think –"

"I was there too, you know! At my wedding!"

Vee was already smiling to herself at the sounds of Sally and Greg bickering and she walked into the kitchen still trying to fasten the necklace around her throat. Greg, silly man, hadn't offered Sal any tea or anything, and Sally was polite enough not to barge into even a friend's kitchen. She turned her back on her husband and he automatically took the ends of the necklace and clasped them together for her. "Tea, Sally? Chai or English?"

"Chai, please," Sally said, raising an eyebrow at Greg, who thought he was being subtle when he shifted his empty mug an inch, the sound of it sliding along the table evidently meant to act like a Pavlovian bell and prompt one of them to offer him some as well. "Does that sound mean 'get me some tea, Sergeant' or 'may I have a cup of tea, please'?"

"The latter. Definitely," Greg said, and it was just lucky for him Vee found him irresistible. She nudged the tin of biscuits over to Sally, who opened it and helped herself to one before setting the container on the table. Greg hummed with pleasure as he selected a biscuit coated on one end with dark chocolate.

"Right, I think he knows not to talk with his mouth full," Vee said, getting the small airtight packet of chai leaves and spices down from the curved corner shelf and spooning the proper amount for three into the teapot. "What's the plan for today, then, Sally?"

"You know my sister's getting married –"

"To that American bloke?" Greg interrupted, retreating back into silence and wisely cramming his mouth with a second biscuit when he saw the looks he was getting.

"To, as correctly noted, the American bloke, Kevin, and the wedding's going to be there in Texas, but somehow his relatives have got the idea that Englishwomen wear stupid hats for every occasion, and they want all of the bridesmaids to wear something along the lines of the most hideous Easter bonnets that ever sat on a posh tart's head."

Vee grinned as she poured the boiling water. "And we get to pick them? Do you have to wear one of these?"

"No, because I'm not a bridesmaid; Mamie understood that I couldn't call a halt to murder investigations just to have spa days and get my hair straightened. I'm lucky the boss is giving me a few days to fly there and back at all."

Greg looked up, decided it wasn't worth defending himself, and subsided, snagging a third biscuit. He could, Vee knew, eat every biscuit in sight and still only have that _incipient_ belly, that appealing softness, while she was getting wider by the minute. Not that that was the issue at hand, she told herself sternly as she finished preparing the tea.

"Then this could be fun, don't you think?" Vee said, handing round the mugs of milky chai.

"I'm trusting your artistic eye to pick out the most revolting ones in the shops," Sally said, clinking their mugs together in a pledge of sisterhood.

*

She was braiding up her hair to hide the effects that hours of millinery had had on it, letting her coffee cool in front of her, when Sally – still sporting the marks that various ribbons and pins had had on her deflated curls – looked at a table across the café and said, surprise evident in her tone, "I think that's John Watson."

Vee was just thinking that the name sounded vaguely familiar when she saw an unmistakeable head of wheat-coloured hair, more of a mop than the last time she'd seen it, and remembered that the man was Sherlock Holmes's flatmate and friend. Greg had mentioned that the man had been able to get Sherlock to give a straight answer instead of posturing simply by snapping out a question; he'd sounded mightily impressed.

"John!" Sally called, beckoning him over when he raised his head and unerringly located their table. He went through the pantomime of _are you sure?_ and _I'd hate to interrupt, I'd be happy to keep clear of your conversation entirely_ – somebody's mummy had raised him right – but Sally kept gesturing, so he smiled politely and pulled an empty chair to their table, his cup of tea in one hand and a newspaper tucked under his arm.

He'd been reading the classifieds, poor man, marking adverts of note with a red marker that had stained his fingers. He caught them both looking and Vee saw the moment he made the decision to address Sally's professional observational skills and ignore her own gold-medal nosiness. "Sherlock doesn't get those eyeballs for free, you know," he said in a genial aside to Sally, then extended his hand in her direction. "Sorry, I'm John Watson. Sally here –" he nodded, too purely friendly to be a sham "– knows my flatmate."

The calluses on his hand spoke well of him, Vee thought, and she grinned back at him. "I haven't met him, but I've heard enough to be intensely curious." At John Watson's puzzled expression, she clarified: "I'm Veena Venkatram, Greg Lestrade's wife."

His appreciative gaze intensified, but all the outward show he made was a smile. "It's very good to meet you." He shifted his weight in the chair a bit, fingers curling tensely around the edge of the table for a moment as if the motion had cost him something, and Vee realised that John Watson, contrary to all the reports she'd heard, didn't carry his cane with him. He was eyeing Sally too seriously for Vee to want to interrupt his contemplation by asking why, so she waited until he spoke again, surprised by where he led the conversation. "You've no interest in hearing me apologise for him, have you?" he asked Sally, evidently trusting Sal to be sharp enough to intuit his meaning.

Sally shook her head and stirred another packet of sugar into her coffee, ignoring her apple pastry. "I'll tell you what you could do for me, though," she said, sucking her spoon dry. At his encouraging nod, she said, "Get out of there, while you still can. I'm not saying he's going to do something to _you_ , necessarily, but he is going to do _something_ , and you seem like too decent a bloke to get caught up in it."

Vee hadn't expected Sally to be so direct or so finite in her terms; there was no operatic pleading or logical case-building. They were a well-matched pair, in fact, Sally and John Watson, one pushing and the other pulling and then reversing course without a hitch. His eyes were down, studying the simulated woodgrain of the cheap plastic table, and when he looked back up, Sally retreated to her cup of coffee.

"I'll be careful. And if he keeps insisting on my presence, rest assured it won't come without me delivering a few home truths, namely: how not to be an utter prat."

"Godspeed, Doctor Watson," Sally murmured into her coffee and Vee couldn't help giggling at the absolute earnestness of her tone.

John Watson looked over at her with rather a cheeky grin; it was rather fun not to be treated as _the boss's wife_ – Sally always being the exception, dark girls together – or as an artist with something very serious and deep to communicate through the medium of marble or some such thing. "What's the worst you've heard, then?" he asked, only half-serious, and raised an eyebrow as she silently ticked off a few hair-raising incidents before settling on a good one.

*

"He's cute," she pointed out once she and Sal were back on the tube. "And not thinking about how cute he is, which is rare." At Sal's pointedly raised eyebrow, she shook her head. "We're not talking about Greg; he's dim beyond belief when it comes to his own appeal."

Sally rolled her eyes and went back to the original subject. "Did he seem _at all_ interested in me?" she asked, as if empirical proof were all it would take to shut Vee up.

Vee thought back. "Yeah, actually. Not in a 'hey, look at me trying to impress you' way, but definitely in a 'you're the prettiest DS I've ever seen, and I keep showing up at crime scenes' way."

"Because he's dragged there by a man who'd give a Bedlam matron the screaming horrors!" Sally bit out exasperatedly.

"Seriously, Sal, he does look like he's just waiting for a word of encouragement . . . oh, no, _wait_. It _is_ over with that creepy forensics man, the one with the whiny voice, isn't it? _Isn't it?_ "

Sally shook her head _no_ just once, and Vee swallowed the rest of her lecture. No point telling someone who didn't want to be told; no point in showing Sally how easily the unhappy look on her face could be traced back to the man she let into her bed.

*

"John Watson and Sally," Vee announced as they tucked into pizza and wine, and Greg choked.

"I thought he was shagging Holmes," he said, throwing down his crust and narrowing his eyes when Vee shook her head definitively. John's eyes had been steady as he looked at Sally with a deeply buried hope, after all, and he hadn't evaded or rationalised any of Sherlock's shittier qualities. "Did Sal say something to you?"

"We bumped into him after we'd found the most nightmarish hats, that's all," Vee said smoothly. "I liked the look of him."

"Oh-ho," Greg chortled, as if he'd caught her out. Stupid, darling man. "Liked the little blond doctor, did you? Enough to want to live vicariously through Sal?"

Vee fluttered her eyelashes and feigned ignorance. "He's a _doctor_?" She finished her slice of garlicky pizza with one enormous bite and washed it down with the red, waiting for him to catch up.

It took longer than it should have, which meant Greg was still stuck on the idea of Sherlock and Watson together; she had to admit it made for a very pretty picture. "You – you –" he said, as if she'd seriously been considering leaving him for _anyone_ else, even someone made to order.

"Idiot," she said fondly, and he nodded happily, shifting closer so that she didn't have to reach quite as far to fist her hand in his soft t-shirt. Just a plain white undershirt, really, the kind she bought three to a pack at M&S for him, but it was warmed through with the heat of his body and he was looking down at her with those eyes getting darker by the millisecond and she would have had to be made of stone not to pull him nearer still. That cotton vest smelt like him, though he'd done nothing more strenuous than paperwork and getting up to refill his coffee cup, and she buried her nose against the line on his neck where fabric first covered skin.

His mouth was rough and prickly with stubble and he tasted like Italian spices and French wine. His hand drifted low on her belly; he was always direct rather than coy or elusive, but he knew how to take his time, to make sure they were on the same page. "Yes," she said into his mouth, just to speed things up a bit, and at that he hauled her into his lap.

She'd been thinking of Sunday-morning tea-and-biscuits comfort when she'd picked out the kitchen chairs, but there was no denying that for this equally domestic, much more dynamic purpose, their solid craftsmanship was much appreciated. She squeezed him tight, fingers gripping those broad shoulders she'd been using as her measure for all of the heroic men she created, smiling at the first touch of his hands under her prim plum-coloured blouse.

"Come on," she said, just as he breathed out, "Now," and she stood up from his lap and led him into their bedroom, walking backwards so as not to miss a moment of that talented mouth, wondering as they went how long a coherent sentence they could make just trading off words like that, back and forth. Her blouse and bra were gone before she remembered coherence was highly overrated.

* * *

**All Very Professional**   
_conceive reciprocity_

Even in his dream, John knew there was something wrong with what he was hearing. No one – native or soldier – had made noises like that; he shouldn't even have been able to _hear_ noises like that over the barrage of bullets his brain was so generously supplying.

He snapped out of his dream, the gunfire vanishing instantaneously, though the wretched wailing did not. God Almighty, could _that_ possibly be what Sherlock had meant when he'd blithely mentioned that he played the violin? It was almost inconceivable that anyone – that 'Mummy' that Mycroft had mentioned, possibly, certainly not anyone like a nanny, who had to answer to a higher authority – could have thought it a good idea to give a boy as wilful as Sherlock an instrument as capable of being misused as a violin.

Pulling his pillow over his head, he lay there, sweating and cursing and trying to spare at least one thought in three for Mrs. Hudson, who really deserved better than to have one of London's top two unstable nutters under her roof.

He needed an escape hatch, even from this bloody gorgeous flat, because Sherlock looked like he was on course to take over John's entire life without pausing for breath, and if he wanted to keep even a vestige of freedom, he'd have to get a job. Right. Tomorrow, or later today, he was going to find a teashop not overrun with chatterers and go through listings in the paper, applying his whole mind to the task.

Sherlock had switched into playing something tonal and altogether beautiful while John had been making up his mind, but that wasn't enough to sway him from his course.

*

 _Make Your Own Hours_ the top advert read, but digitised medical transcription surely required that its practitioners were comfortable with technology; he liked to say that he'd simply missed the email revolution, being in the desert and more concerned with thermometers than laptops, but the real truth was that he couldn't bring himself to trust that the stated messages were all that was being sent and received. It was never that simple.

Harry hadn't written, but Clara had, a few times, before those messages trickled out and were replaced by her familiar signature on the cards tucked into his care packages of tea and sugar and jumpers and photographs. But those emails he'd pored over obsessively, wondering what fresh hell Harry was putting her wife through if the emails had timestamps like 04:23, then second-guessing himself to wonder which time zone the stamp reflected. And the words were like a code, such tiny, heavy words, as if Clara were pressing them into double and triple duty, each bearing the burden of extra layers of meaning. _I miss you_ was markedly different from _we miss you_ ; did Clara think Harry was writing on her own, then? Or was she determined to keep her relationship with John free from the poison seeping through her feelings for his sister?

He looked down to see that he'd managed to cover his hands in ink while circling items in the columns at random. When he heard his name being called in a voice he couldn't quite place, he looked up and saw Sally Donovan, gorgeous as ever, beckoning him over. There was another woman sitting with her who looked like she was experiencing the same light déjà vu that he was, though she was no closer to putting a name to his face. Just before she introduced herself, he had it; he'd seen her photo on Lestrade's mobile, when they'd all been puzzling out where Jennifer Wilson's phone might have got to, and then where that great git known as Sherlock Holmes could have misplaced himself.

John let her be for a moment while he exchanged courtesies with Sally. He wasn't blind, after all, and Sally was a woman worth looking at, all long legs and determined jaw and intelligent eyes. And he could hardly fault her for her antipathy toward Sherlock; he was going on his instinct to trust the man, but if hers steered her in the opposite direction, who was he to override her gut with his? Sherlock was a prize arse, to be sure, and he'd never have made his life easier by demonstrating anything other than smug superiority in front of Sally.

Despite the pink tissue paper peeking out of the many bags surrounding her, promising frothy lingerie and languorous ease, Sally was brisk and efficient in reiterating her warning, and John let her words sink into him. He couldn't explain it even to himself without embarrassment about puffing up his own importance, but he understood Sally, _got_ her; they'd both looked at the world and determined that they were willing to sacrifice their blood and breath if that was what it took to make a better one. Of course there were good and bad cops, good and bad soldiers, but the impulse was clean in her, and he hoped in himself as well.

He memorised how she prepared her coffee – two sugars, and enough milk that its colour matched her skin – and listened to the pleasant sounds of women's voices sweetening the air around him.

[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/innie_darling/pic/00024pxk/)

*

"Sherlock," Lestrade said in a near-whisper, looking back wistfully at the pub where he and John had settled in for a pint and a testing of the waters, "are you sure about this?" When Sherlock didn't deign to answer, Lestrade shrugged and kept pace with the man, John a step behind them both. The song that had been playing in the pub was running through John's mind still, and through Greg's too, evidently, given that he was absent-mindedly humming the chorus.

"Of course I am certain that the man has gone to ground in this area, and this is the most likely of the three possibilities. Perhaps you could make a bit more noise and set the suspect running again," Sherlock suggested frostily, several minutes later, as if there had been no pause at all.

"Hsst," John hushed them both peremptorily. He'd never been one of those _what use will algebra be in the real world?_ kids, but it seemed a little ridiculous that the lessons of Afghanistan should be applicable to real life outside of a war zone. Or maybe what was ridiculous was that _this_ was his real life, unpaid assistant to an unpaid consultant to the Met. "I'm seeing movement inside."

There was an aggressive gleam of satisfaction on Sherlock's pale face; John's view of it was cut off by Lestrade moving in front of both of them, putting himself in the lead. _Protect the civilians_ was clearly at the top of Lestrade's list on how to be a good DI, and it spoke well enough of him as a man that John didn't voice any of his protests about not being an average civilian. Greg was buttoning his coat as he went and John remembered that he needed to hide his hair if he was going to be hunting killers in the dark. He tugged his navy blue t-shirt out from under his jumper and twisted it round his head. Sherlock, still with his white shirtfront gleaming expensively, looked at the two of them like _they_ were the crazy ones. John felt like a nanny or possibly _Mummy_ when he reached out to button Sherlock's coat for him; belatedly, stupidly, he realised he could simply have borrowed Sherlock's precious scarf to hide his too-light hair.

Which meant that when Greg stepped forward, his pale checked shirt almost completely covered up, he did so without either of them as backup, and was lost immediately to the gloom within the – what was it, a warehouse? A factory? Something large and cavernous, at any rate, and no place for three unarmed men to be taking on a lunatic who had a demonstrable knowledge of knives and rather a knack for finding soft, vulnerable places to strike.

It still surprised John, how much it hurt to know half of himself was gone, even as he thought _this is where I belong_. Sherlock impatiently ignored all of John's medical advice, used him as a sounding board and as backup instead, and here he was now, skulking in the dark, his hands – no longer capable of healing – curled into a bruiser's fists. He'd made himself no better than this, into someone who could cope with things that Lestrade, or even Sherlock, for all his _look at me, I'm such a sociopath_ posturing, simply could not. He pushed past his flatmate, barrelling forward to assume the lead. His bad shoulder struck something warm and pliant – had to be the killer – and in so doing, knocked the man off course. The knife in the bastard's hand swooped down, the motion like the predatory dive of a hawk, one stray beam of moonlight shining off the blade and Greg's silver hair, and the sight was enough to pull John's stomach into his throat.

*

Sherlock was still muttering protests while he picked Lestrade's pocket and John could just make out a few words and phrases here and there – "It's his _arm_ , not any of the tendons in his leg; he can still _walk_ " was the longest but not even close to the most scathing – but John was in no mood to humour him. Lestrade's spilling blood was appalling in how it differed not one bit from that of any of the soldiers he'd failed to save.

It seemed Sherlock wasn't used to being ignored; once they were all in the cab, he swivelled to take the folding seat and shifted until he was in John's line of sight. He even spoke a bit louder, as if the problem was that John had gone hard of hearing rather than selectively deaf. The cabbie took a considering look at the three of them, clearly wondering if the warrant card Sherlock had flashed was worth the trouble of passengers seemingly ready to come to blows in the backseat. "I thought you would insist on a hospital," Sherlock accused, though it was unclear which of them was his target.

Greg took it upon himself to answer, which was beyond John, who felt his jaw soldered shut with anger at Sherlock's lack of proper emotion. "Don't need one, surely." Greg gave a grunt of pain but couldn't manage to twist his head far enough around to get a good look at his own mangled arm. "Got a good kit back at the flat," Greg finished with a hopeful glance at John, who did his best to smile and nod because it wasn't Greg's fault that Sherlock had led him blithely into danger, and relayed the address Greg gave him to the driver.

It should have been Greg's moment, but Sherlock of course stole the show, barking out his deductions as to the extent of the injuries to Lestrade's terrified wife, whose hands shook as she switched off the stove burners. Vee, that was her name; he remembered it just as Greg said it as soothingly as he could. "Doctor Watson," she said, plaintively, voice rising in the four syllables until it harmonised with Sherlock's unceasing flow of words.

"Call me John," he said, "and tell me where I can find your medical supplies." He watched her hands instead of listening to her incoherent words and found the kit on his first try, hurrying back to where Lestrade sat patiently bleeding on his own sofa, red deepening the colour of the elephants that appeared with geometric regularity on the throw tossed over the back.

Sherlock was still speaking, but John spared him no attention; Sherlock's voice was too purely beautiful, too overwhelming for John to be able to hear any nuances that might have been there. He flicked his eyes once at his flatmate, noting the gesticulating hands and the pristine pallor of his ivory shirtfront, peeping out between the dark wings of his coat, and felt his own pulse keep thudding regularly even when he caught a glimpse of the one mark Sherlock bore – a thin stripe of Greg's blood spattered across his neck, just dotting the origami of his pale shirt collar.

When Sherlock stalked out of the flat a moment later, coat swirling behind him, no doubt to supervise the arrest of the man they'd left handcuffed to heavy machinery, John felt half the tension in the air dissipate. "Not so bad, right?" Greg asked with an unconvincing grin at his wife, nodding his chin at the jagged wound John had cleaned with alcohol.

"That depends if you mean _that_ –" she gestured at his pink-tinged arm "– or _that_ ," she finished with a cock of her head toward the door Sherlock had just used; when Greg started to laugh, she gave a tremulous smile, mouth stretching beneath eyes bright with unshed tears. John nodded at her and those tears spilled over without prompting any more. He watched her hand find Greg's hair and stroke through it.

How long had Greg been putting up with Sherlock? Five years, hadn't he said? Christ, that was far too long, but at least he had someone who grew brighter at the sight of him waiting for him at home.

That was more than he had managed, anyway, John thought as he bandaged Greg's heavy bicep, leaving Vee to apply whatever magic kisses were necessary as he put their medical kit back to rights.

* * *

**The Final Push**   
_i will not eat my heart alone_

The hammering on the door made her jump, the oil she was pouring sent astray and taking some of the mustard seeds in the pot along for the ride. It couldn't be the worst news, she told herself sternly, if only because no one would be that eager to tell her that Greg had died. Which meant that Greg was most likely hurt, quite possibly just on the other side of the door, and waiting for her to get her legs in gear was not helping him in the least. She ran for it, but the flat wasn't long enough to need a running start, so she had to catch herself, palms against the door, chest heaving, before she could work the lock and latch and swing the door open wide.

Greg's head was lolling on his neck like a cut sunflower, too heavy even for its thick stem, but he seemed to be trying to lift his head to make eye contact with her and smile reassuringly. Doctor Watson, holding him up, didn't bother trying to placate her; he just moved in, pulling Greg along with him, and got them into the flat and on the sofa before she could do much more than blink at the tall, spare figure of Sherlock Holmes, perfect from his tousled crown of hair to the expensive shine of his shoes. The leather of his gloves creaked as he flexed his fingers and the sound was like an admission of guilt; there was all too short a line to be drawn between one of Holmes' so-called brilliant ideas and her husband bleeding on the blanket she'd had since she was twelve years old.

She turned, uncaring that she was offering Holmes only her back, and saw that she'd left the stove on. Flying over to turn off the burners didn't leave her with enough time to get her voice under control, and it showed when she ventured, "Doctor Watson?"

He had a smile comforting enough to draw her gaze away from the scarlet streaking down Greg's too-pale arm. "Call me John," he said, voice kind, and set about fixing her husband, hands steady and deft and gentle enough that she didn't see Greg's brow wrinkle once.

*

Vee would have been happy to put Greg back on the sofa, now divested of the bloodied blanket, and feed him there while he watched TV, but Greg was the one with all of the rules about proper mealtime etiquette, one of which was that there was to be no TV, no papers, no books, no work; he said he got enough of trying to eat over cases at work and when he got home all he wanted was a hot meal to eat and her to look at.

Even though the table was exactly the wrong height for him to be able to rest his bandaged arm comfortably on its surface, Greg still insisted on sitting there, as if that would be enough to convince her that he was just fine. She took her cues from the anxious frown John wore instead, watching as he unobtrusively guided Greg to his chair and got him settled. Not a pin-scratch frown, but a proper furrow; he had a face made for marble. Right. John was going to be her ally, whether he knew it or not. "Please stay," she said, and he looked up, startled, worried lines fading from his face.

She liked that he didn't bother to protest, that he understood that the trouble it would take to dish up an extra plate of food would be amply repaid by his expert eye on Greg, who was already looking more than a little drawn. John drew up a chair for himself and sat where he could keep watch. "Actually," he said, popping back up, "could I –? It's just I don't want to get this anywhere else." He gestured at the blood painting his jumper and trousers.

"Green bedroom, second drawer in the dresser," she said, nodding approvingly when he came padding back in his socks, wearing only his own t-shirt – RAMC stitched over the pocket – and Greg's oldest pair of pyjama bottoms, rolled several times at the waist to keep the legs short enough that John could walk unimpeded and also to make the waistband a little snugger; without his jumper providing misleading bulk, John was thin in a way that suggested illness rather than fitness. Despite the sight, she grinned at how crisp the fabric was – those pyjamas had lain in that dresser drawer for years, since neither she nor Greg had ever confided in either of his sisters that he preferred to sleep naked, wrapped around her.

Vee got the food on the table and let John serve himself. As she'd suspected, he went not for the mild dishes she made to accommodate Greg's palate but the stuff she'd grown up eating, spicy enough to sear taste buds and get the nose and eyes running. The sight of him happily devouring everything in front of him made her get up and head for the fridge, seeking out one of the glass jars that she kept screwed tightly shut. His eyes brightened when he caught sight of the fluorescent orange and maroon contents of the jar; she handed it to him so that he could twist off the top and he inhaled the released aroma reverently. Greg started to choke just from the scent, and she and John grinned conspiratorially at each other. "Lemon?" he guessed.

"Mango," she corrected, and dropped a few pieces of the pickle on his plate. She fished out another with a fork and bit into it with gusto. John raised an eyebrow as if to say he was impressed but not about to be fooled into a pissing contest with her.

" _Two_ lunatics," Greg said with a tired smile. "Fantastic."

*

Her pleading eyes had never worked on anyone but Greg, but John didn't even make her make the attempt. Without exactly consulting either of them, he accompanied Greg to the sofa and put in the DVD Greg was apparently keen to watch. There wasn't much room between them – the sofa was small enough to foster snuggling when she and Greg were on it together – and if John managed to take advantage of the proximity to check Greg's forehead for fever, she wasn't about to interrupt her washing up to draw anyone's attention to that fact.

By the time she'd finished with the dishes and transferred the leftovers into colour-coded containers, the two of them were giggling like primary-schoolers at _The Simpsons_. Each of them apparently cherished the belief that his own impression of various characters was world-class, and what began as a friendly competition soon degenerated into name-calling as comparisons were drawn to Dr. Hibbert (and his atrocious jumpers) and Chief Wiggum (and his atrocious intellect). She stood in front of them, hands on her hips, and while they both automatically shifted sideways and craned their necks to see around her, soon the point she was silently making sunk in and they sank back, chastened. She'd hardly turned to go when the giggling started up again.

* * *

**Enjoyable Experiences**   
_you can afford courage_

John had thought he was too old and too . . . obviously damaged to be waking up in someone else's bed. But the other side of the bed was cold, the pillow undented, and the blankets undisturbed, so he hadn't had company. If he'd had a nightmare, he'd moved through it rather quickly, pushing forward with enough momentum that he hadn't woken up.

He squinted and looked around the room, eyes still bleary, wondering what had woken him. Ah, bladder. He put his hand up to touch the deep-blue walls as he walked, guessing that the bathroom would be to his right. He peeked down the hallway and saw the front door of the flat, shoes scattered in untidy piles nearby and a merry-eyed Ganesha hanging in the entryway; a look in the other direction revealed not only the loo but also the green bedroom he'd entered last night. Right, this was Lestrade's place, his and his wife's.

His trousers were still hanging in the bathroom, damp in patches where he'd tried to scrub Greg's blood out of the material. There was a faint beep coming from one of the pockets, which still housed his mobile. He wrestled it out and peered at the display. Texts from Sherlock, of course, beginning with demands for his time and attention and ending with a command to filch whatever case files Lestrade might have lying about in unguarded desk drawers. John resolutely thumbed the mobile off, brushed his teeth, and gave his face a good scrubbing.

He followed the sound of murmuring voices and the aroma of chai to find the kitchen, where Greg and Vee were cuddling, she sitting on the counter island and he wedged between her legs, his head on her breast. One of her hands was stroking down his spine firmly over and over, and Greg looked ready to melt at the treatment. John smiled at the sight and waved to keep her where she was; he could certainly fetch tea himself. One quick but rousing game of charades with her later, he had a mug in his hand and an invitation to all the chai he could drink. It was only at his involuntary sigh of appreciation for the flavours of her homemade blend that Greg's eyes opened.

"Ready for a check-up?" John asked, his voice reduced to a husky murmur because of the hot swallow of tea he'd just drunk. Greg cocked an eyebrow at him and John darted a glance upward to see Vee grinning benevolently at him. "Sorry, that was not meant to sound like the opening line of a porno. Just – I really should take a look at your arm, make sure nothing's going amiss." He set his mug down and approached them, since Greg looked unwilling to unwind himself from his wife for the foreseeable future.

John peeled the gauze away, nodding at the butterfly bandages beneath and the still-pungent olfactory sting of the antiseptic. "This looks good, and I'm sure you know to wrap it in plastic if you want to shower. Should be pretty easy, actually, given the location of the injury."

He'd just rewrapped the wound when he felt a hand sliding through his hair and cupping his head affectionately. It made his knees shake – he hadn't been touched with any kind of tenderness in far too long; he and Harry had never got on well enough for those kinds of touches, and Clara had, in those last weeks since he'd been back, carefully removed herself from their orbits to keep things on an even, if unhappy, keel. Before he could disgrace himself by closing his eyes and leaning into the touch, it was gone, a quick pinch to his cheek serving as a coda. "This one's got a sister-in-law," Vee announced, looking down at him like some beautiful, benevolent deity from on high who could get away with wearing a shocking-pink batik nightie.

John tilted his chin slightly down, just enough that she'd have trouble scanning his face but Greg could still read his expression. "What, another deductive genius? Couldn't get enough at work?"

Greg sniggered and John guessed it was the vibrations from him passing to her that made Vee laugh as well. "Go on, impress John," Greg invited.

"He's your friend –" at that, John snuck a look at Greg, who was glancing sidelong at him, equally uncertain and shyly pleased; clearly they were both idiots destined to be friends "– but he doesn't treat me like an extension of you, or interact with me only through you. He's a man who's comfortable with women."

"That could just be that I've got a sister," John pointed out.

Vee shook her head. "So does this one. Two, in fact, both older than him and still thinking of him as the baby they used to mind. And anything more awkward than Greg around strange women has yet to be invented."

"Ah, love, you're plenty strange," Greg said, earning himself a nip on his ear that he looked tremendously pleased by.

"Still," John pressed. "How did you know that I've got a sister-in-law? Clara, married to my sister Harry."

Vee had gone suddenly taciturn, but Greg stepped into the breach. "Because you've got no problem looking like an idiot in front of a woman you'd have tried to pull if she weren't someone else's wife."

John, feeling his cheeks and ears burning, was glad to have an excuse to look down at himself and the rolled-up pyjama bottoms and shapeless socks that could hardly be showing him to his best advantage. Bloody hell, was he really that crass, that he'd apparently been making eyes at Lestrade's wife? That was what _three continents of glory_ got him – an instinct that was going to get him heaved out of the first place he'd felt welcomed since he'd been back in England and onto his lily-white arse.

Vee grinned at him, her killer instinct very much on display, and oh, he could see _exactly_ why Greg had married this one. "You can make it up to me," she said, all shark-like smile and mischievous eyes, and he agreed without knowing what in the world he'd signed up for.

*

"What is it exactly that you do?" John asked; normally, he'd trust his instincts that Vee was not going to do anything drastic or even unpleasant to him, but the look of schadenfreude on Greg's face was curiously compelling.

"I'm an artist," Vee said absently, looking between him and the light pouring through the windows, eyes sharp like they could burrow beneath his clothes. Greg was smirking as he buttered his toast.

"Look, if you want me to pose for a life study," he said, responding to the surprise on Greg's face with a touch of smugness, "I can do that for you, no problem." The vast majority of people he'd known had seen him naked at one point or another, thanks to larks at Barts and his quest for life-affirming sex while in uniform, and more than a few had documented the sight with photographs and sketches. And Natalia had even brought body paint to his room one night, and the impressions they'd made on his crisp white sheets had made John a legend among men. "But I can't do life-masks or anything like that." The feeling of wet plaster on his skin, pulling at his fine hairs, hardening gradually until he felt like he'd shrunk to fit it, was not just unpleasant but somehow triggering for him, though there was no direct link between what he'd seen and done and the texture of anything even vaguely like mud. Triggers were illogical, brains being the tetchy things they were; it was exhausting trying to keep track of what would set him off.

She looked directly at him, her eyes darker and even more direct than Lestrade's official, penetrating stare, and John saw her gaze drop down, not to his shoulder or his damned leg, but for some reason to his belly. She nodded as if there had never been any doubt about whether she would understand what he was trying to tell her. "I just want to make a few sketches," she said. "Though it will be a tremendous sacrifice not to see you naked – especially since the line of your shoulders is quite different from my regular model's – you can keep your clothes on."

John relaxed all the way at her light tone. "Bit chilly in here to make a good first impression," he agreed affably.

"Far too late for that," Vee said sweetly, already making thick charcoal lines on the heavy cream of her sketchpad.

"She's saying you'd never measure up," Greg interjected helpfully, finally bestirring himself to refill all three of their mugs. His arm seemed able to handle the weight of the pot without any issues, John noted, observing closely; that was a very good sign, though he might have been overcompensating for his bicep with his hand.

John opened his mouth to defend himself and cast aspersions on what the DI was working with, only to be beat to the punch by the DI's wife. "If you make him laugh and ruin the lines of this pose, then both of you will be stripped naked and posed for a study in Greek wrestling forms," she promised, her hands not stopping as they flowed over the page.

"Finally I'm being paired with someone other than Sherlock," was all John said after a pause, voice dry as he could make it, and Vee looked up from her sketchpad to eye him speculatively, far less serious than her husband, who looked like he was dying to ask if _all_ the rumours were false. John gave him the two-fingered salute and picked up the original thread of the conversation. "And if you're the one who makes me laugh?" John asked Vee, brushing a finger over the tip of his nose to indicate to her where charcoal dust had already settled on her face, freckling her brown skin.

"Oh, that's fine. Artist's privilege." The words were self-aggrandising, but there was a heavy dash of irony in her tone. John figured she was up for a challenge, so he let himself laugh.

*

Sherlock eradicated contexts, that was what he did, John realised when he walked back into the flat. They hadn't been fighting when they'd parted – when Sherlock had stalked off without a word of explanation and left him at Greg and Vee's flat – but somehow, Sherlock still managed to make his silence pointed.

John nearly offered to make tea, even though his own insides were sloshing with the stuff, but then he saw that Sherlock had set out a mug with a teabag on the counter just next to the kettle. Apparently that last step of turning the kettle on and pouring hot water over the teabag had been too much for him, after the excitement of having his deductions proved correct by getting Greg carved up.

Sherlock, prone on the sofa, seemed to be waiting for _something_ , and when John didn't speak, he let out a sigh. Nothing fond or indulgent about that sound – it was sheer aggravation that motivated it, and John didn't particularly want to hear more.

"I'm off for a shower then," he said, already tugging at his jumper. Waking up in a strange bed usually meant round two in the shower with a lovely lady, but even now with no soapy vixen around, he found he was craving the feel of hot water on his skin.

"Lestrade couldn't give her children, but she'll never leave him for you, even temporarily," Sherlock said, not bothering to make eye contact. At least he didn't have his hands up in that affected prayer position.

He wondered if he should just ignore Sherlock's mean shots in the dark, if discretion were the better part of valour, but he'd already turned to go back down the stairs. "I have no intention of sleeping with Greg or his wife, Sherlock, and it would be nice to know where exactly you get off assuming that I'm incapable of being someone's friend." There was an ache along his jaw, strain from keeping himself in check.

"You make friends _very_ quickly," Sherlock said, casually barbed, as if he'd never witnessed anything half as disgraceful. John wondered if Sherlock knew just how much he sounded like his brother sometimes.

No reassurance of continuing friendship was going to be enough for Sherlock, evidently, and John frankly wasn't sure he could shape the words and give them voice with any decent measure of honesty. He trudged upstairs, intent on having that shower, ten minutes of peace; Sherlock had yet to intrude on him in the bathroom, though surely that was coming one of these days.

He scrubbed stray molecules of charcoal dust from his skin and the sweat from his hair, and then stood under the spray with his eyes closed and mouth open, just letting the water beat down on him with a therapeutic tenacity. The rough cotton of his towel felt nearly as good when he dried himself off.

Right, so it wasn't the bathroom but rather his own bedroom that Sherlock was set on invading. Sherlock was sprawled across the bed, diminishing its size with his sheer presence; his eyes were closed but the hand he thought he'd blocked from John's view with his body was white-knuckled as it clenched at the duvet. "Neither of them wanted children – obvious from how Lestrade spoke of Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter, no personal history there – and neither of them has ever been unfaithful to the other."

"That's your version of an apology, is it?" John asked, dressing while the tosser still had his eyes closed. "There's no reason for her to want me, so there won't be any adultery today, thanks?" A roll of thunder reverberated outside, surprising him with both its intensity and its timeliness. "You didn't think that I might have a code for myself, and that I'd never hurt a friend like that? Cheers."

Sherlock's face was illuminated by another streak of lightning as he attempted to defend himself. "You're a man who clearly prides himself on sexual conquest, and Lestrade's wife is both attractive and unrelated to you by blood or marriage."

It wasn't about conquest, or at least it hadn't been, not for a long time. It was about reciprocity, the chance that some kind of connection would be made, and the rest of the world would either melt away or grow sharper around the two of them; either way was lovely, and he hadn't had it in so long. John looked down at his bed, at the sharp-tongued man lying across it, and felt the fight drain out of his body. Sherlock still didn't call Greg by his first name, and he'd suggested stealing Met files; friendship was not familiar territory for him. "There's always something," John reminded him. "This is where you're wrong."

[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/innie_darling/pic/00025h9t/)

*

A walk in the rain wasn't going to do him much good if his leg seized up, but procuring food – and putting some distance between himself and Sherlock – took precedence. Thai sounded good, and his phone beeped as he clicked open his umbrella. _Red curry and glass noodles. York Street, past Wyndham Place. Mention my name. SH_

John had barely got Sherlock's name out before the girl behind the counter – not quite pretty, definitely appealing with those kind eyes, John thought automatically, then wondered if his unthinking assessments of women going about their lives, getting on with their jobs, were just biological instinct or signs of something more troubling – heaved a large takeaway bag in his direction. "For Sherlock Holmes," she said distinctly, "and friend."

She smiled at him as he paused in the doorway, trying to open his umbrella without dropping the food. He smiled back and stepped out onto the pavement, the patter of rain on his umbrella a cheerful beat just above his head.

* * *

**Taking Shape**   
_a life of joy with you_

"Didn't you hear the doc? I got the all-clear on this arm," Greg said, flexing for her like she was still a starry-eyed teenager. "I'm fit for active duty."

"Prove it," she said against his mouth; he caught himself before he agreed.

"No chores," he bargained. "Not today."

"Not up for a challenge?" she asked, then handed him the hairbrush and started unpinning her mess of hair.

"You are so spoilt," he grumbled, but the smile on his face was real, and he sat behind her on the floor.

"Yes, please," she said, unrepentant, and he put down the brush to work through the tangles with strong fingers that never forgot to be gentle. Being petted like this always made her a little spacey, a little sleepy, and the rhythms of his hands working in her hair betrayed his mind's tendency to wander off while he was occupied with manual labour. "You do like him, don't you?" she asked quietly.

"Yes." She'd been expecting some kind of justification, a reminder of what Sherlock Holmes was like, an allusion to the character of a man who'd served his country as a soldier and as a doctor, but that was all he said.

"Mmm," she said as he picked up the brush and started sweeping through her hair with extravagant strokes, flourishes that began with bristles tingling pleasantly on her scalp and ending with the tips of her hair stretched as far as they could go. "My good man."

He tossed the brush aside once more and swung around so that he was in her lap and facing her. His fingers were buried in her hair again as he kissed her, fierce and plaintive, and she splayed her hands on his arse and pulled him in tighter. "Only you," he gasped against her mouth, and she swore the same with the bites she left on his cheek and jaw. They rocked together, unable to decide which way they wanted to go, and she found herself giggling, tickled deliciously by the vibrations of his laughter, and getting wetter by the millisecond. "This way," he said when he'd got himself under control, pushing her down and divesting her of her clothing with authoritative ease. Her hair was a warm prickliness beneath her, setting her nerves alight.

God, he looked marvellous like this, naked and unashamed, fit and _known_ , all hers, and she parted her legs invitingly so he could kneel between them. The tip of his cock dragged wetly up her thigh as he stretched to lie on top of her, blanketing her for one endless moment before he rose up on his hands and dropped his hips, pushing inside her, sweetly relentless.

There was always a dazed disbelief in her head when they were in this particular position; she marvelled over how completely full she felt, squirming with the pleasure of it. "Here, now," he said, his nose tracing delicate lines on her cheeks and chin, while he held himself still to give her a moment's respite.

"More," she said, coming back to herself, revelling in the sensation of those strong hands curled possessively around her hips, tilting her up to lay claim to her thoroughly.

"Spoilt, like I said," he gasped as she clenched around him. He bit at her nipple, the one that pointed to the side like a lazy eye; he had a preference for that one.

He buried his face between her breasts, his temple and her heart pressed close together, their pulses urging each other on to greater speeds. Her hands slid down his back, over all that warm skin of a grain far more beautiful than marble, sweat springing up in the wake of her touch. "Please," she whispered, and like that was the cue he'd been waiting for, he set up a rhythm that drove all thoughts out of her head except _MINE_.

She was off like a shot, and the feel of her coming around him made his eyes roll up in his head. There was no way they were going to hit their all-time record, but she thought she had at least one more orgasm in her; blunt nails against his skin and scalp kept him grounded and moving frantically inside her. "With me," he growled out and she tipped her head back, vaguely seeing the wall behind her upside down, and obliged him.

He kissed his way down her body, taking the scenic route it seemed, as he pulled out. There was a crack of lightning and a rumble of thunder as rain suddenly came crashing down. The plants on the windowsills would appreciate that. Greg was sitting up, mostly, one hand playing with her off-kilter nipple, and she stretched and rolled up next to him, one arm across his lap.

"My hair's all tangled again," she said.

*

Her first feeling, when John sat down opposite her at their usual table and smiled, was regret, and it took her aback enough to stay silent while he stole a few of her chips, heedless of the fact that his own pile would be coming in a moment.

It was the knowledge that he and Sally weren't going to be together, she realised, because Sally was still entangled with that man no better than he should be, the one with a wife at home, and John had found someone else to keep company with, a woman called Sarah, whose voice she'd heard when John called to confirm their lunch date.

She hoped this Sarah was good enough for him. There was something tentative about John's response when she asked after her; all he said was, "Sarah's very kind and very beautiful." Which told her next to nothing about whether he was happy when he was with her, but Vee let it go, fingers brushing his when they both dipped their chips in the sour cream and then dragged them through the well of sweet chilli sauce on the side.

"You're leaving tomorrow, aren't you?" John asked. "That's why Les– Greg wasn't the DI in charge of the case Sherlock just finished, isn't it?"

"Mmm," she agreed, swallowing a delicious mouthful. "He's had this leave on the books for months, so they said he should concentrate on getting all the paperwork done for the last few and not take on any new cases."

"Are you looking forward to this at all?" John asked, smirking at her over their salads.

"Yes," she protested feebly.

"Come on, even Sherlock could do better than that," he teased. "Try again."

"I love Gen and Deb, and Greg's dying to see his sisters and their kids. But it's the _West Country_ ; it's boring beyond belief."

"Surely you could do some sketching or something – isn't it supposed to be beautiful out there?"

"Watching too many Jane Austen adaptations, John?" He flushed at the reminder of the night she'd walked into the flat to find him and Greg half-drunk with _Northanger Abbey_ on in front of them. She'd stayed to watch the end with them, at which point a pink-cheeked John had said he needed to go home and check on Sherlock; she'd watched him go and then, without any shame, stolen Catherine's move of surging forward and kissing her husband until his back hit a wall. Greg hadn't bothered with embarrassment at all, and that had just made her all the more eager to make his legs turn to jelly.

John was studiously spearing the asparagus in his salad. "None of your business. Where do you want to go, then?"

"What?" She hadn't realised she was even longing for a trip until he posed the question.

"Well, where was the last place you went?"

"It's all been family visits to the West Country and Cambridge. The last time we took a proper trip was on our honeymoon. We went to the Maldives."

"That sounds lovely."

"Yeah, it was." They had been together for a few years already at that point, so the only surprise had been how much it shook her to look at him and see her ring on his finger, how disbelieving she was when her own clinked against her teacup or caught the light when she raised a hand to his supremely contented face.

"So where would you want to go?" John repeated patiently. He was already done with his salad and she hadn't done more than push leaves aside to find a few olives.

"Greece," she said decisively. "I'd like to stand in front of the Parthenon before I die."

He nodded, smiling at the waitress to get the last of his meal – a pot of strong tea and a slice of iced lemon cake – delivered to the table. "Well, you'd better go, then. Doctor's orders."

*

"I have to _work_ for my supper?" John asked, sounding frankly aghast; he was a better actor than he admitted.

"Better than singing for it, mate, I've heard your voice," Greg said. "Just need to put together a few bookshelves, nice and easy."

John groaned but stripped off his jacket and got to work. Vee watched him while the pressure cooker weight shuddered in place; he didn't even look like the same man she'd first met, scrawny and worn through, whose hands shook and whose leg regularly betrayed him. John looked strong enough to take on anything now, and did, if she could count on Sherlock Holmes to be exactly as idiotic as he sounded.

The cooker whistle blew and she ducked back into the kitchen. She could hear Greg interrogating John in a discreet undertone, evidently not realising she could hear every word once the whistle stopped its screech. She kept up the illusion of privacy by clattering spoons against pots, but she still heard John say definitively, "Greece. She wants to go to Athens."

Greg must have said something about being unable to afford to splash out like that – she was occupied with blending the sauce for the chickpeas in quick little pulses – because John said, "Just take her, you cheap bastard. You can use the money you're saving on a carpenter by pressing me into service instead." His voice betrayed how pleased he was to have sawdust in his hair and a reasonable task in front of him, and Greg must have heard it, judging by the tone of his murmured response.

She left everything to marinate a little longer and went back out to the living room. Her sketchpad was right there, so she flipped it open and began to draw them, two strong bodies conspiring to defeat gravity and create something of use and beauty. It was too bad, she thought, as her fingers flew, smudging the pencil marks for the right depth of shade, that her medium didn't allow her to record the grunts and laughter that filled the air around them.

They were a remarkably efficient team, and they had both bookcases assembled and positioned more quickly than she'd anticipated. She rose from her position on the floor, where she'd been trying out variations in perspective, and her knees cracked dramatically. "Oh, you've _got_ to be joking," she muttered.

"Getting old," John said, all spurious wide-eyed innocence, as if he weren't only a few years younger.

"Quiet, you," Greg said, aiming a light slap at the back of John's head, and leaning over to kiss her once the blow landed.

"Can we put off dinner for an hour?" she wheedled. "I want to see what I can make out of this." They both nodded, good-tempered as the best men were, and Greg fetched bottles of beer from the kitchen.

"You," she said to John, who'd accepted his drink with a smile, "would make a gorgeous statue." Marble was definitely the right medium for him, all steady and solid in body and lined in face, wearing his life's experiences on his skin.

"Make me immortal, then," he joked, laughter lighting him up. He trailed off when she didn't join in. "No, really, Sherlock's the one who looks like he belongs in a museum."

"Or the nuthouse," Greg said into his bottle.

She didn't disagree with John's assessment of his flatmate; she'd seen Sherlock half a dozen times by now, and those odd features and whipcord grace were well worth recording. "God, no," she said aloud. "It would take the patience of a saint to sculpt his hair alone, and even then people would think I'd just done another Medusa."

John choked on his giggles and Greg thumped him on the back. "Sherlock would make a very good painting, though. Watercolours on wet paper, I think. Would he sit for me, do you think?"

"He's vain enough," John mused, "but I don't know if that's the form his vanity takes."

"Not even as a favour for a friend?" she asked, watching John's expressive eyes cloud over and clear again between one blink and the next at that.

"Maybe," he allowed. She nodded, then got lost in the work, seeing Greg and John take shape on the page, strong and certain and tested, like twin guardians in a modern mythology.

*

"Morning, Sally," Vee said through a mouthful of hairpins as she finished winding her hair into a knot that would stay in place for at least a few hours. "How was the wedding?"

"Very nice," Sally said. "Mamie looked lovely, Kevin is exactly who I'd pick for her. And – you were right – it decided me."

"Right about what?" she asked, leading the way back to the kitchen. "The hats?"

Sally smiled wanly at that and peered down the hallway. "Greg's still sleeping, but I can get him if you like," Vee offered; Sally had something to get off her chest, clearly, and working nights couldn't be making it easier for her to get past the jet-lag and get her life back on schedule.

"I'm not going to see Ted anymore," Sally said, face crumpling, and Vee stopped fussing with the kettle and wrapped her in a hug.

"How'd he take it?" she asked, soft words that Sally could pretend hadn't got past her shining curls.

"I haven't told him yet. We'll be on the same shift on Friday; I'll tell him then."

"Is he likely to be a bastard about it?"

Sally sniffed and clung to her. "I don't see why this would be the exception," she joked. "I'm sorry," she said, stepping back, but Vee didn't let her get away with that.

"Shush," she said, and hugged her again. Sally slumped a little in her arms, and then with a final squeeze they let go. "Go and sit. I'll have your tea ready in a minute."

When she came back out, Sally had her eyes fixed on her latest sketch of John and a wry grimace on her face. "He really is a nice man," Sally said.

"Yes," Vee agreed, setting down the tea and biscuits and easing the sketchbook from Sally's unresisting hands.

*

"What's the occasion?" she asked when John showed up at their door, coming straight from work. No, straight after running an errand after he'd finished work for the day; she could see a Waterstone's bag in his hand.

"Is Greg home?" he asked, brushing by her to get into the flat.

"He just texted to say his shift is done and he's on his way. What's going on?"

"He's the cake, I'm just the icing," John said.

"That was terribly subtle, John; I'm not sure but I think you were hinting that you wanted a slice of the cake I just bought. Could it be?"

He grinned at her, shameless as an imp, and she couldn't help grinning back.

"If you're having one, I will too. Just to keep you company."

"Of course," he agreed promptly. "It's only fair."

Greg walked in just as they were sucking crumbs from their fingers. "Couldn't even wait for me, could you?" he grumbled happily, smiling at the sight of them. "You didn't tell her, did you?"

John shook his head. "All you, mate. In fact I think I'll wait this one out in the living room with the telly on."

Greg watched him go then turned back to her with an air of triumph. "Close your eyes," he said, and she obeyed with alacrity. She heard the rustle of paper, and when he said, "Okay, now," she opened her eyes to see two airline tickets to Athens on her kitchen table.

She must have made some kind of odd, carrying noise at the sight of them because John rushed back in, more quickly than necessary. "No, I'm fine," she said, before grabbing Greg's head for a kiss that was just the start of what she wanted to do to him. "Wait, what's your news?"

"Just a little gift to make sure your experience is all that it could be," John said, opening the Waterstone's bag and handing her a book. _Greek-English Phrasebook_ it said, with _NEW YORK EDITION!_ printed underneath.

"New York?" she asked, puzzled, but John was already smiling and taking it back.

"Trust me, the plain old English version was not nearly as exciting." He flipped through a few pages. "See, there are three columns: one Greek, one English, one _New York_. So, we have 'ne' and 'yes' and 'abso-fucking-lutely.'"

"What?" Greg asked, while she went off into a gale of laughter.

"Or, if someone is being particularly persistent, you could say 'fige,' which can be translated either as 'go away,' which seems likely to be ineffective, or 'get the fuck out of here, fuckface.'" John was giggling rather madly himself, and Greg snatched the book from his hands with a look of disbelief. She fell into John's arms and watched her husband's eyes get wider and wider.

"This will get us arrested!" Greg protested, and there really was no point trying to get herself under control.

"Abso-fucking-lutely," John said.

* * *

**Opening Play**   
_they roar in chorus, not in tune_

Sarah hadn't been expecting him – though, really, given how often Sherlock was in a strop, maybe she should have been – but she let him in. He smiled at her, finding it charming that she kept smoothing down her hair like it looked messy instead of just appealingly disordered.

Her flat was full of pretty objects, things he could imagine her buying herself as rewards: this vase for landing the job at the surgery, that painting for being promoted to the head of it. He didn't have to be his disastrous flatmate to read her flat, to read _her_ , beautiful and dressed down for home in her blue jeans and green top. "Hi," she said, smiling back and leaning forward to kiss him. Her mouth was firm and welcoming, and he got one hand up to thread through her hair.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, breaking away. "I do lovely gourmet takeaways."

He laughed at her self-deprecation and kissed her again, tasting the wine she'd been drinking. "Doesn't even have to be gourmet."

"Good, because I'm craving shepherd's pie and chips," she confessed. He kept his arms round her while she placed their order, and she turned to face him as she clicked her mobile shut.

Just looking at her was good for him; he could feel the spikes of his irritation with Sherlock being smoothed down by her calming presence. He looked at her fair skin and clear eyes and did not ask just what she'd been thinking to give him another chance instead of cutting her losses and running.

*

John stretched as best he could, trying to work out the kinks Sarah's godawful sofa had left in his neck and back, and resolutely kept himself from wondering if he'd have been better off at Greg's place, in that luxurious spare bed with Vee's spicy food a warm weight in his stomach and the promise of companionship in the morning. Or if he should have stuck it out with Sherlock, whose look of surprise when John walked out was surely evidence that he hadn't meant to be hurtful with his lashing out.

In any case, John had come to Sarah and she'd taken him in, and he looked forward to thanking her properly for it. She walked into the living room, her light-blue robe outlining her body, and he wanted to untie it and lay her down and feel her warm skin against his. But she spoke, keeping things light, and he was assailed once more by disbelief at her beauty; he still wasn't sure what exactly he was doing in her flat, getting to see her first thing in the morning, getting to joke with her about breakfast and future dates.

He smiled after her as she went off to have a shower, and he sat in peace and quiet for a moment before his world shrank to the size of the TV screen. He _knew_ that building, even if it took him far too long to read the caption _House destroyed in Baker St_. His heart hiccupped and his throat clenched tight. _Sherlock_ was all he could think, but he forced himself to say the other name, calling out for Sarah as he gathered himself to run home, back to where he belonged.

_Sherlock._


End file.
